RoboMasters the Animated Series – 01

So we have decided to pick this up. I have not done a release post in years, and I cannot remember when was the last time I was in-charge of writing a release post. So pardon me if I am too long winded as I am still slightly rusty from all the years of inactivity.

The reason we are doing this is simple. Because there were no English subtitles for this, and episode 03 has already aired. I figured that if anyone was going to do it, they would have done so. I guess the reason why RoboMasters is not popular is partly due to it being a Chinese-Japanese co-production. However, it is to be noted that the animation is not handled by the Chinese, contrary to what most people think. Rather, it is helmed by an established studio: GONZO, together with Dandelion Animation Studio. The latter is in-charge of all the mecha fight scenes, while the former does the character designs and everything else. I may be wrong, but as far as I am aware, the Chinese is only responsible for the production of the series and nothing more. The series is exclusively streamed at a Chinese streaming website (qq.com) with Chinese dub as well as the original Japanese voice-overs. If you watch the Japanese version, other than the signs and character names in Chinese, you could hardly tell that it is done by Chinese. So do give it a try before you pass judgment.

What is RoboMasters about? It is an anime about a tournament that is actually happening in real life. You could google and actually watch some of the real battles on YouTube. The concept involves college students in teams pitting themselves against other teams from other colleges. where they have to fight with assembled drones and rovers or robots, whatever you call them. The anime talks about the events within a particular college. The main protagonist (Dan Dan) is a freshmen who has a unique drone, but is hesitant about entering the tournament due to some events that has happened in the past, which involves his brother and his team. It is a pretty straight forward anime about coming-of-age, college life and drones? I shall not bore you with my writing. Instead watch it for yourself!

Finally, credit has to be given to the team for pushing out a release within one week upon receipt of my script. This definitely exceeds expectations given our standards in recent years. Hopefully, this continues. I remain optimistic as what we are doing is true fansubbing, just like back in the old days. There is thus real motivation and meaning, which I feel would be vital in getting us through the entire series. It helps that WOWOW has listed only 6 episodes for this, so it would not even be one-cour. Again, a big shoutout to the entire team. The release would not have happened without every single person involved. This cannot be emphasized enough.